As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option is an information handling system. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements may vary between different applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
As the speed and processing power of information handling systems increases, component power consumption and corresponding operating temperatures have increased. For example, components such as fully buffered DIMMS (FBD) memory, chipsets, PCI buses, and control logic have seen large increases in power consumption as operating speeds and performance demands continue to rise. However, accurate temperature reporting mechanisms have not kept pace with temperature control demands within information handling systems. For example, power consumption and temperature management primarily depend on using system level fans controls to maintain temperatures. Such controls are challenged due to inaccurate temperature value detection, cumbersome reporting paths, and the number of component temperatures being reported.
Some conventional temperature control systems use temperature monitors, or thermistors, to report temperatures within housings to control fan speeds and maintain component temperatures. For example, as internal ambient temperatures increase, fan speeds are increased to reduce heating within the system housing and lower internal ambient temperatures. This leads to an overall decrease in fan operating speeds, which may not be required as in most instances; ambient temperatures are representative of actual component temperatures. As a result, very little internal ambient temperature resolution is achieved and poor mapping of thermistor temperatures to component cooling requirements is compromised.
Another conventional solution for controlling operating temperatures includes providing current sense resistors as inputs to system fan controls for controlling fan speeds. For example, current sense resistors have been used to sense voltage regulation down (VRD) power delivery and provide an indication of component power dissipation and component temperatures. However, bill of materials (BOM) costs associated with using current sense resistors is fairly high and the level of accuracy is lower then required for some applications. Additionally, the output signal of current sense resistors is fairly dynamic which can lead to quick changes in inputs to system fan controls causing fans to speeds to prematurely change increase and/or decrease in response to changes in current. For example, as compared to current sense resistors, component temperatures have large relative thermal mass and are somewhat slow reacting (seconds vs. milliseconds). Moreover, use of current sense resistors requires an application specific coding to achieve a mapping of power consumption to temperature variations while conditioning fan speed output signals. The increased software and processing overhead to achieve desirable operating temperatures complicates controlling temperatures through varying fan speed outputs. As such, what is needed is a simplified temperature control mechanism that allows for component specific detection of temperature variants and utilizes conventional system fan controls for cooling specific electronic components within information handling systems.
The use of the same reference symbols in different drawings indicates similar or identical items.